An Algarve-based British expat has been questioned in Faro by Portuguese and British police about his movements on the evening when Madeleine McCann disappeared from an apartament in Praia da Luz in 2007.
The British man is alleged to have been working near the holiday apartment rented by Kate and Gerry McCann and had given a statement to police at the time of the original investigation.
Police are focusing on the hours between 7pm to 9.30pm as Madeleine’s parents dined with friends at the Ocean Club after their children, Madeleine and her then two-year old brothers, had been put to bed.
The gardener/handyman has been interviewed by British and Portuguese police officers in Faro.
The interviewee has lived in the Algarve for over ten years and denies he has any useful knowledge of events on that fateful evening.
The man has been questioned before and achieved reports show that he stated that he had left the resort bar at around 7pm that night. The crucial period is between 9.15pm, when Gerry McCann checked on his children, and 10.00pm when the alarm was raised by his wife.
The gardener lived in Praia da Luz until 2006 and gave a DNA sample to Portuguese police at the time of interview in 2007.
Operation Grange has identified seven ‘new’ suspects in the case, this man being one of them, whom police believe may have vital information.
A British woman is on the new list of arguidos, as are four men from Portugal and a woman possibly from Eastern Europe. All have been asked to give DNA samples and have been or will be interviewed as officers carefully go oevr every piece of old evidence in the case that still has police and the public quite baffled.
These interviews follow a forensic review in which British experts were unable find any DNA match with strands of hair kept as evidence during the original police investigation.